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What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Paula’s Pumpkin Soup

17 Oct

Fantastic for fall!

I’m actually eating Paula’s Pumpkin Soup as I type this post today. It’s my lunch on this autumn day, and it’s a perfect fall crock pot recipe!

Paula is a new friend of mine from the Washington DC Kids’ State Dinner trip. Many of us have kept in touch since the trip through a Facebook page. Paula has been a great friend and a fan of The Whole Bag of Chips. I’m thrilled to feature her recipe on here today.

It’s fast and easy and it was great for our day this past Sunday, which was filled with an afternoon of family fun at Don’s school, followed by a later afternoon of football, laundry and errands. Having dinner cooking in the crock pot on a day like that, couldn’t have been more helpful. I also threw a beer bread in the oven to go with it, since I can’t picture having a thick, hot soup such as this one, without a slice of beer bread to go along with it.

Here is the recipe for Paula’s Pumpkin Soup. Just to note, I doubled this recipe, using two quarts of stock and a 29 ounce can of pumpkin.

Thank you Paula for passing it along!
Enjoy!

I loved the added flavor that the sausage and onions gave to the soup.

INGREDIENTS

One quart chicken broth (low sodium and low fat)
One can pumpkin puree
1/2 TSP nutmeg
One half an onion
Garlic to your liking
Sweet italian turkey sausage
1 – 1 1/2 cups brown rice and quinoa
DIRECTIONS

Sauté the sausage, onion and garlic in olive oil until the sausage is done.

Put everything but the brown rice and quinoa in the crock pot and cook on low for 6 hours.

Add the cooked brown rice and quinoa 30 minutes before serving.

If you prefer, orzo also makes a nice addition to this recipe.

Nothing like crock pot cooking on a busy day!

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Breast cancer awareness month and why I do what I do

15 Oct

October is breast cancer awareness month!

Last week I had the privilege of covering a story at our local high school where the student body had come up with several ways to show their support for a teacher recently diagnosed with breast cancer and to raise money for the breast cancer cause itself. It was an amazing show of support. The students had given their all, and it showed. The American Cancer Society will greatly benefit from their donations. I felt blessed to be there as a witness to it. (I have put the link here in case anyone wants to make their own charitable contribution to ACS.)

According to the principal, the teacher is a young woman with a young family.

My worst fear.

Every mother’s worst fear, right?

It was Meredith Israel’s worst fear as well. I don’t know Meredith but about ten days ago my brother sent me the link to her blog post, which the Huffington Post had just posted on their site as well. He doesn’t know Meredith but she’s the friend of a friend and he was so moved by her writing.

When he gave me the heads up as to what the content of her blog was, and that she had a five year old daughter, I couldn’t read it.

But eventually I did.

And I’ll never forget it.

I won’t give you the details because you’ll want to read it yourself.

Or maybe you won’t be able to either.

But as I read it, and as I thought about my own life and family, I thought to myself, “See, this is why I do what I do.”

So often I’m told, “I don’t know how you do it all,” but really it’s not the how, because most days I don’t know how either, but it’s the why.

Clearly I’m an overachiever, and I definitely can’t sit very still for very long. But I wasn’t always this way. It wasn’t until I became a mother and I began having those fears every mother has, the “What if something happens to me,” fears. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t worry about that, even deep down.

Those fears awakened in me the drive that keeps me going every day. It’s the drive and the desire to have no regrets. For as much as humanly possible, I want to have no regrets, looking back. That’s why I do the things I do, whatever that may be, why I give 110% to everything I do, especially if it involves my children.

Now I know that the chances of something happening to me are probably slim, and I also know I could be hit by a bus tomorrow, as they say. But I look at it kind of like life insurance. You pay it all along, hoping you never need it, but when and if you do, you’re so glad you did it all along.

Should something happen to me, looking forward I’d be sad for what I’ll miss in the future, but looking backward, I will have no regrets. I’ll know I did it all, as much as I could, to live each day with no regrets, to spend every moment possible with my children and my husband and my family; and to make the moments count.

Meredith Israel said it well in her recent post; a great piece of advice, definitely words to live by, in my opinion:

“Until then, live each day to the fullest, laugh at the stories from your past, laugh at something at least one time that day and hug those you love.”

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Lazy Cake Cookies

12 Oct

This recipe needs just a few ingredients, cooks fast, and makes a great dessert to bring or even mail, anywhere!

I love going on Pinterest, you find so many great things that other people have already tried out. I’ve found some nice new additions to my repertoire, and today’s recipe is one I tried out this summer and have done many times since.

In July my school book club had it’s summer meeting which is one that is at someone’s house and everyone brings something to munch on. This year I wanted to bring dessert and I was looking for something new.

Lazy Cake Cookies from the I’m a Lazy Mom blog was it. When I saw the limited amount of time and ingredients needed, I was sold. It was summer after all, and who wants to spend all day baking? Not me.

The other thing about summer is that it’s both of my sister-in-laws’ birthdays, all in the month of August, with mine. My West Coast sister-in-law is at the beginning of the month, I’m in the middle and my East Coast sister-in-law is at the end of the month. So I decided that if this recipe was good (and it was), I’d make these cookies for their birthdays.

I’ve since made them for a play date in September and for when we went to my cousin Val’s for dinner this summer.  They’re great for any occasion and everyone always likes them.

See how cute? Chocolate hearts!

The neat thing is you use a cake mix as your base, and I’ve done white, chocolate and yellow. Chocolate was my favorite (surprise!) with white as my next favorite and yellow as my last favorite. Another neat thing about this recipe is that because it’s a bar cookie, you can use a cookie cutter to cut them into cute shapes. I did hearts for both my sister-in-laws because we love them, and I actually kept all the “scraps” and put them into a ziploc bag for my family to munch on after we shipped off the cookies.

Next time you need a fast recipe, a recipe to make and take, or just a recipe for your own family, give this one a try. You’ll be hooked on how fast it is, and you’ll make them again and again. I know I have!

LAZY CAKE COOKIES
INGREDIENTS

Cake mix, eggs and butter!

1 box yellow, white or chocolate cake mix

2 eggs, beaten

5 Tablespoons melted butter

2 cups mini chocolate chips or m&ms. (I don’t do mini.)

Use a pizza roller for ease in spreading!

DIRECTIONS

Mix the first three ingredients. Batter will be dry.

Add in your filler (chocolate chips, m&ms, etc.)

Spread in a 9×13 greased baking dish. (I find that spreading with a pizza roller works great!)

Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

Make them and take them!

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What’s For Dinner Wednesday: Dinner on the Run

10 Oct

Even if we all have just one commitment, if they all fall on one night, that makes for a tough schedule to keep and we don’t want our nutrition to suffer.

Lately on Facebook, I’ve seen a lot of people asking for ideas for healthy and nutritious “dinners to go,” not as in take-out or fast food, but more as in, “What can I feed my kids on a night where we have to run from school to soccer to CCD,” type of a thing. Although we do try not to over-schedule our kids, I find that if you have more than one child, along with adult commitments too, it’s nearly impossible not to have a jam-packed schedule after school even if each child chooses just one activity. You multiply that times a large family and some nights you have no choice but to have a quick meal or to eat on the run.

The good thing about these Egg Muffins is that you can put anything you want in them, and people can tailor them to the likes and dislikes of the members of their family.

Recently I tried a new breakfast idea that I saw on Pinterest, originally from the Kalyn’s Kitchen blog  for Egg Muffins, and as we were eating them, I thought it’d be a perfect idea for dinner on the run, even though it was breakfast at the moment. It even said that you could use the leftovers from breakfast during the week if you refrigerated them. Another thing to think of when you have a large family: there aren’t often leftovers anymore! But, if I were doing this ahead of time, we would not eat them for our Sunday breakfast.

A couple of other things I liked about this meal were: 1) I thought they’d be great for a brunch item and 2) When you have several different sets of taste buds living under one roof, the ability to make one meal in a variety of ways is great. You can fill these with whatever you’d like.

When I made ours, I started out slow, just using two different fillers: spinach/cheese and ham/cheese. The ham/cheese filled muffins were the more popular of the two, although I liked them both.

With five of us, everyone had two and there were two left over which I put in a sandwich sized ziploc bag and later in the week I reheated them for my lunch after work one day. It was perfect.

If you’re looking for something healthy and different for those on-the-run nights, give this recipe from Kalyn’s Kitchen a try!

See her recipe below.

Filling goes into the cups first, then the eggs on top.

Egg Muffins

(Makes 12 muffins, recipe created by Kalyn with inspiration from The South Beach Diet book.

15 eggs (for silicone muffin pans, use 12 eggs for metal muffin tins. You can use less egg yolks and more egg white if you prefer.)
1-2 tsp. Spike Seasoning (optional, if you have food allergies or don’t have Spike, use any type of seasoning blend that’s good with eggs.)
1-2 cups grated low fat cheese (I like sharp cheddar or a blend of cheddar/Jack cheese, use less cheese if using meat)
Optional, but highly recommended, 3 green onions diced small.
Optional: chopped veggies such as blanched broccoli, red pepper, zucchini, mushrooms, etc. (Using veggies will reduce the fat content)
Optional: diced Canadian bacon, lean ham, or crumbled cooked turkey sausage

Yum!

Preheat oven to 375 F. Use regular or silicone muffin pan, 12 muffin size. If using silicone pan, spray with nonstick spray. If using regular muffin pan, put two paper liners into each slot, then spray liner with nonstick spray.

In the bottom of the muffin cups layer diced meat, if using, vegetables, if using, cheese and green onions. You want the muffin cups to be about 2/3 full, with just enough room to pour a little egg around the other ingredients. Break eggs into large measuring bowl with pour spout, add Spike, and beat well. (I used to add a bit of half and half or milk, but lately I like the way they turn out without it.) Pour egg into each muffin cup until it is 3/4 full. I like to stir slightly with a fork. Bake 25-35 minutes until muffins have risen and are slightly browned and set.

Muffins will keep more than a week in the refrigerator without freezing. Egg muffins can be frozen and reheated, but I like them best when they’re just refrigerated. For best results, thaw in refrigerator before reheating. Microwave on high about 2 minutes to reheat.

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Swedish Apple Pie

5 Oct

When September rolls around, it’s time for apple pie!

It’s my second-favorite time of year, other than summer: it’s fall in New England! There’s nothing like it, a beautiful season for all of the senses.

It’s actually already October now, really more pumpkin time than apple time, but I realized that I had never posted this recipe and I made it at least a month ago! It’s an oldie but goodie from my mom’s kitchen. The recipe card she originally wrote the recipe on states that she got it from “Good Neighbors.”

I like this recipe because it’s different than your typical two crust apple pie and because it’s fast. When I don’t have a crust on hand, I almost always have flour, sugar, butter and eggs, which is just about all you need to make this pie.

Before you whip out your pumpkin ingredients this October, try this pie while it’s still apple-picking time!

Simple ingredients mean that I almost always have them on hand!

SWEDISH APPLE PIE

Fill a 9″ pie plate 2/3 full with peeled Cortland or Macintosh apple slices.

Sprinkle with a mixture of:

1 TBL Cinnamon
2 TBL Sugar

Next, in a medium bowl, mix together:

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) melted butter or margarine
1 egg
3/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt
1 cup flour

Spread over apple slices and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until golden brown.

Serve with whipped cream, ice cream….or both!

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What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Quinoa, Black Bean and Corn Salad by Haile Thomas

3 Oct

Quinoa, Black Bean and Corn Salad was on the menu at the Kids’ State Dinner at the White House in August.

Ever since our trip to DC for the Kids’ State Dinner, I’ve had a list a mile long of things I want to make that we either had on the trip or are recipes in the cookbook (free download here) we received from epicurious showing all the recipes from the other winners. One of the things I’d heard about but had never tried til DC was quinoa. It was in one of the dishes we ate at the White House, and it is now today’s recipe.

A few weeks ago I picked some up and I spent some time reading about what it is, how you cook it (has to be rinsed first in most recipes) and what kinds of things you eat it with. Even though I had the recipe for today’s dish, I actually used it first to make muffins, which four out of five of us liked, so you’ll see that at some point in the future too.

Caroline was so excited that we were finally going to try out this recipe, it’s been at the top of her list too!

Last week we tried out Haile Thomas’ recipe. Haile is from Arizona and Caroline and I both loved her dish when we had it in DC. Haile is 11, and the cookbook blurb states that they began experimenting with quinoa when the family gave up eating white rice when her dad learned that he was a diabetic.

“The secret to [the recipe’s] success is that ‘all the kids love it, the ingredients are affordable, it’s easy to make and it’s just plain good,'” Haile’s mom says in her quote. They say it can be served hot or cold and I agree. We had ours as a side dish with quesadillas and again, the same four out of five of us loved it. I guess quinoa is now going on Alex’s Don’t Like List.

Coincidentally, just as I finished typing this, I found out that Haile is featured in this month’s Food and Flourish Magazine. In fact, she’s not only featured on pages 26-31, but she’s ON THE COVER!

If you haven’t tried quinoa before, I highly recommend it. I’m thrilled to have another healthy option for side dishes with our meals and I’m glad so many of my family members love it!

**Any modifications I had to make for this recipe I have put in parentheses. **

Haile’s Quinoa, Black Bean and Corn Salad

Serves 6

I love all of the colors in recipes like this. We definitely “ate a rainbow” with this dish!

INGREDIENTS

2 (15 ounce) cans of organic black beans (ours weren’t organic) drained and rinsed
4 cups fresh corn (we used a bag of frozen, cooked but not hot)
1 pint cherry tomatoes, quartered (I chopped up a large tomato)
2 cups cooked quinoa
1 medium red onion, chopped (I used half, it was large)
1/2 bunch fresh cilantro or flat-leaf parsley (I used dried parsley)
2 avocados, pitted, peeled and cut into cubes
1 Tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 lemon halved (mine was bad so I used lemon juice instead)
Sea salt

DIRECTIONS

In a large bowl, combine the black beans, corn, tomatoes, quinoa, cilantro or parsley, red onion, avocados, and olive oil.

Squeeze the lemon halves and add their juice to the bowl.

Toss to combine, then season to taste with salt and serve.

Cook’s note from the Thomas family: To make this dish hot, warm it on the stovetop of in a microwave, or saute all the ingredients together and add the avocados and cilantro or parsley after it’s plated.

This was a perfect side dish for our quesadillas last week!

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This is what I am the most proud of this week

1 Oct

I’m trying out something new for this school year. We’ll see how it goes!

Well, we’ve been in school exactly one month now. That means at our house, approximately 300 papers have come home from school between the two schools and the three kids.

I say this with slight exaggeration.

Slight.

We get a ton of papers home daily, weekly and monthly and I’m sure we’re not the only family drowning in notices, tests, quizzes, homework, art work and the like, for 180 days a year.

I’ll also tell you…I’m a saver.

Not a hoarder, there’s a difference. I’m a saver, safekeeping, keepsakes.

I’m also, as most of you know, a former teacher, so I have those types of tendencies as well: bulletin boards, displays, things like that.

Put it all together: my dining room is my classroom. I’ve been known to have classroom-style calendars on the walls when my kids were little, sticker charts encouraging good behavior, paper chains counting good deeds or days until something starts or ends, and papers on display; tons and tons of papers.

I also use that space to hang all their crafts and birthday cards. Hallways too.

With so many kids, there’s so many crafts, cards, artwork and good papers to display. It can get overwhelming.

This year, our Summer Timeline is still on the wall. I wanted to take it down but the kids weren’t ready yet. I only just got the second half of the summer’s pictures up on there, so they wanted some additional time to look up on the wall and remember their summer before I take it down to save it. (For a keepsake.)

That meant though, that there wasn’t really a good space to start displaying school work as it started coming home these past few weeks.

In the meantime, we’ve been spending the last six months or so doing some work on our house and I came across some unused items from a Stampin’ Up! class I once taught, as I was cleaning out my office. Those items included some magnetized display boards which can stick to a refrigerator.

BINGO.

I had an idea. I had five or six of those display boards. I had a sharpie marker. I took the marker and on the bottom of the display boards I wrote “This week…I am the most proud of this!” on three of the boards.

I stuck them on my fridge, one above the other. (We only just recently removed all the alphabet magnets from the fridge door, so there was a perfectly empty space there for about five seconds before I re-purposed that space.)

Now, each child can go through the papers they bring home that week, or whenever they bring them home, and choose the item they are the most proud of and stick it in the display until another paper comes home that they are even more proud of. It can be a piece of artwork or a test or a homework page that was hard, or really whatever they want.

When I taught, student portfolios were huge. They were a chance for the students to show what piece of their work meant something to them, without someone choosing for them. Many times the piece you think is important, isn’t and to them another piece has more meaning for a reason you don’t even realize. At the end of the school year, the students got to take their work portfolios home and they’d have a year’s worth of work to show, all pieces that were memorable for them.

So that’s what we’re trying out at my house this year. We’ll see how it goes. I still have the urge to cover my “bulletin boards” aka dining room walls with stickered school work, but for now, I’m trying to refrain. We’ve got a birthday coming up anyway….I’ll be able to fulfill that urge by putting up birthday cards instead.

I’m still saving all the good papers though.

Keepsakes. For later.

Saving. Not hoarding.

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My new toy and TWO new recipes!

28 Sep

Isn’t it SO beautiful???

I have a new toy.

I’m *so* excited about it.

It’s something  I’ve wanted for a long, long time. Years and years.

Thanks to the folks at epicurious, I finally have it.

What is it you ask? (See, I always know when you’re asking.)

It’s my new Kitchen Aid Pouring Shield for my stand up mixer.

I know, I know!!!  I’m excited too!

When we went to Washington DC this summer for our White House luncheon, we got a goodie bag from the organizers of the event. There was all kinds of stuff in it, and one of the goodies was a gift card from epicurious! We could spend it however we wanted, on ANYTHING!!

I’d never been on their website before, and omg…there was tons! But, I had a budget of course, and I stayed within $2.85 of that budget. My pouring shield was on sale!! I couldn’t even believe my luck!! Even better…I had a coupon code for being a first time shopper (10% off)…and you KNOW how much I love coupons…I was even able to get a cupcake plunger too (you’ll see that come up on here  eventually too, I’m sure.) It was almost as exciting as meeting Michelle Obama. Well not quite. But you know what I mean.

So now I had to try it out, but I needed to wait for a time when I needed to mix something. You don’t just use a pouring shield every day, you know.

The pouring shield was a dream come true. No baking cocoa all over my counter and wall. Love, love, love it!

On Tuesday when Caroline asked me approximately 47 times if she could bake cupcakes, I knew I had my opportunity. We had a no school day on Wednesday and it would also be a grocery shopping day, so we’d be re-stocked on all the items we needed to make cupcakes, since for every recipe she showed me we were out of something.

We opted to go with Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Butter Cream Frosting.

I know….you had no idea we’d go with the chocolate. Shocker, I’m sure.

Caroline found this new cupcake recipe on the Cookie Madness website. We did not use the no powdered sugar frosting recipe that went with it, however, because we had powdered sugar at our house. I’ll post both recipes  we used, so that you can see what we did for frosting.

This recipe was perfect for testing out my new pouring shield. It worked great every time, not one speck of powdered sugar or cocoa went flying anywhere! I’m in love…

COOKIE MADNESS QUICK CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES

INGREDIENTS

2/3 cup whole milk
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup unsweetened natural style unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted after measuring (4.5 oz)

Cool for a few minutes in the pan and then on a cooling rack, before frosting.

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line 12 cupcake cups with paper liners.

Mix together milk and lemon juice and set aside to curdle.

Beat oil and sugar with an electric mixer until smooth. Beat in
egg, vanilla, salt, and baking soda until well blended. Beat in cocoa powder. With a large mixing spoon or rubber scraper, stir in the flour alternately with the milk until flour is absorbed.

Divide batter equally between 12 paper-lined cupcake cups. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Cool in pan on rack 20 minutes. Remove to platter to continue cooling.

Each of the three girls got to frost four cupcakes and eat one, saving another for the next day.

CHOCOLATE BUTTER CREAM FROSTING
Better Homes & Gardens

INGREDIENTS***We halved this recipe which was more than enough for 12 cupckaes.***

1/3 cup butter
4 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup unsweetened baking cocoa

Milk as needed

DIRECTIONS

In a bowl beat butter or margarine til fluffy.

Add in cocoa.

Gradually add 2 cups of powdered sugar, beating well.

Slowly beat in 1/4 cup of milk and vanilla.

Slowly beat in remaining sugar.

Picasso over here took about five full minutes to frost each cupcake. Each one was perfectly done when she finished.

Beat in additional milk if necessary to make of spreading consistency.

One full recipe makes enough to frost the tops and sides of two eight or nine inch layer cakes.

One each, saved for the next day.

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What’s For Dinner Wednesday: Sausage & Peppers

26 Sep

Everyone at our house likes some aspect of this recipe, whether it’s the sausage, the peppers, the pasta or all three!

Today’s recipe is one of those not-an-exact-recipe posts. It’s more of a meal suggestion post.

We’ve been back to school for one month now, and everything is getting back in full swing. We often need a fast, easy meal so we can eat together and then run to wherever we need to be.

Sausage and Peppers is that meal. Not so often because it’s not super-healthy for you, but on occasion it’s a good one.

We usually throw ours on top of pasta so that there is something for everyone to choose from, no matter what they like or don’t like.

To make this simple meal you need just a few ingredients:

Sweet Italian Sausage cooked through and sliced
Sliced Peppers (red, green, yellow any color will do!)
Sliced Onions

Cooked pasta (we like egg noodles but any kind is fine)

And the directions are simple:

Saute your veggies in olive oil and garlic.
Add cooked, sliced sausage (you can either cook your sausage under the broiler first, then cool and slice or you can cook on top of the stove, cool and slice).
Saute sliced sausage with sliced veggies.

Serve on top or next to pasta.

Option: Sometimes we offer rolls for sausage and pepper sandwiches instead of pasta. The sandwich version also makes a great meal to serve for our at-home birthday parties as part of our buffet.

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Happy Blogaversary to Me!

25 Sep

One year ago today!

Normally I don’t post on Tuesdays very often, but today is a special day.

It’s my One Year Blogaversary!

One year ago today, I posted my first official post, My First Morsel, on this blog.

I wasn’t new to blogging, I’d had blogs on and off on varying topics since believe it or not, 1999 when my brother set one up for me with the birth of my first daughter. I will say, with a newborn, I did not post on that one very often! But, I was a blogger before most people (even me) really knew what a blog was.

Through the years I had a rubber stamping and scrapbooking blog, a blog of all my newspaper articles and a blog of our family recipes.

I loved them all, but with the amount of writing I need to do for my newspaper job, I needed to find one blog where I could post all of that and more, anything that I wanted to write about or share, all in one place. I didn’t want to limit myself to just one topic, but I did want to limit myself to only one blog!

And so, The Whole Bag of Chips was born. It was a place where for the last year I tried to find my way in the blogging arena, one which has exploded with blogs since 1999 when I wrote my first blog post as a new mom.

I can truly say that I love my blog. It gives me the chance to share and to be a resource and to try new things, all of which I love to do. It gave me something new to fill my days with my children all in school for the first time ever, last year. And, it gave me another excuse to write, to cook, and to craft, all things I love to do and love to talk about.

I love when I get an email or bump into someone, and they say, “I love your blog,” or “I tried your recipe,” or “I learned this from you.”

It gives me a warm feeling to know that I can share what I’m learning along the way and help others too.

When I first started, I remember being excited when I had 3 or 4 or 5 people reading my blog a day, and I was thrilled when I had more than 100 in a day, and most recently when I had more than 400 in a day, my highest to date.

I set a goal for myself last September, to see if I could draw a large enough audience to reach 20,000 hits in one year and I am thrilled to say that I surpassed that goal a few weeks ago, and as of today I am close to having more than 23,000 hits for my first year.

I don’t know how that compares to other blogs, and really it doesn’t matter to me, I’m thrilled and proud of my blog’s success this year.

I have found a posting pattern that works well for me and my readers, who span the entire world, literally, seem to like it as well. I have posted about crafts, kids, holidays, recipes, books, giveaways, day trips, awards I have received for my writing, vacation spots we have visited, my foray into couponing, living life on a very (extremely) tight budget as we move towards being debt-free in just eight more months, our amazing trip to the White House this summer, and really just about anything my heart desires.

So today, I’d love to hear from my readers. I always love your comments and feedback on any given day, but today I’d love to know: what’s one post that you particularly loved, or what is one topic you really look forward to? Anything you want to read more about? Let me know today!

I know my blog isn’t perfect, but I’ve got another whole year to work on it before my second Blogaversary. Until then…..

Happy Blogaversary….To Me.

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